I took the plunge back in October to try my hand at flash photography, did my Aunt's wedding and was pleased with the results and did some around Christmas with similar results, now i'm at Autosports next week and thought i'd actually read the manual to make sure i was getting the most out of it, i now understand a few more things like high speed sync and 2nd curtain sync which i'll have a play with :D but...

It's when i come to the auto bit where i'm wondering what i'm doing wrong, the manual says it will fire a preflash before the actual shot, but it's not :confused: i've set everything correctly on the flash and camera but still no joy :mad: me or the camera/flash?

Also, if i turn the flash off and focus an object in a badly lit room at ISO800@f4 i get a shutter speed of around a second which is about right, now if i turn the flash on it only drops it to half a second, now surely the flash is going to light the subject enough so i can get around 60-250 or else what would be the point? :wonder:



*waits for the 'you've got a lot to learn' comments* :D

I haven't got a 430EX (yet!) but as far as the Nikon speedlights go the pre-flash is so close to the main flash going off that you probably don't/can't see it. As for the problem with the half second exposure are you sure you don't have the flash/camera set up for rear curtain or slow synch? That'll get you slow shutter speeds which can produce very creative results.

that was going to be a question about the preflash, should i be able to see it? i had a few goes at looking at the flash before i went blind :lol1:

that was part of my question, i can't see any flashsettings on my camera apart from white balance, and the flash is most certainly on stock ETTL settings :confused:

"Oh you've got a lot to learn" :lol1: only joking.
The preflash is REALLY quick, and very easy to miss. Being a Nikon man I'm not 100% certain what the Canon indicates, but if your flash has 'TTL' or 'iTTL' indicated, and the shots are nicely exposed, then the odds are it's working correctly.

Take a picture in a lit room with flash, then hold a white piece of A4 paper about 4 or 5 feet in front of you so that it fills say 30-40% of the scene. The flash should reduce it's power to compensate for the extra reflection.

And as for only loosing half a second. What mode is the camera set to? It may be doing something called 'slow sync'. It's a great way to get some colour and atmosphere into your shots, whilst extracting some nice detail. If you can hold the camera steady that is.:lol1:

i also tested the preflash with the 2nd curtain sync mode with a 2 second shutter speed and it definitely fired




definitely only seeing one visable flash that i can see, if it's quick then its really quick! and you couldn't tell them apart


slow sync might be it, read about it in the manual but doesn't tell you a whole lot about it, just thought the idea of the flash was to take pictures at a decent shutter speed, i have a lot to learn :lol1:

:lol1: 2 replies whilst I was writing that. ETTL is right:thumb: